Lee’s screech and the crashing clatter of glass and tin brought old Pompey on the run to see what the “devils in the jar” had done now to Marse Lee.
From the next room sounded the pounding of Uncle Gem’s cane as he thumped the floor to summon someone to tell him what was happening.
Lee hurried to his uncle, looking rather sheepish, and rubbing his elbow where the “prickles” still tingled.
“No, sir, not hurt; just got kicked a little,” he reassured the old man. “That thing I made looked mighty innocent, but it had power to it—more’n I thought for.”
Lee Renaud’s first experiment lay smashed all over the floor, but he didn’t care. He could make another Leyden Jar, for he still had the shaped pieces of tin, the knob, and the rest of the necessities. In spite of the smash, he was terrifically thrilled—he had tapped power, real power that time! He had learned something important too: electricity was not anything to be played with. It was as dangerous as it was powerful.
With his next Leyden Jar, Lee went forward more carefully. There was a contrivance of his own that he wanted to try out this time, too.
And a very crude contrivance it was—nothing more than a length of wire and two long slivers of a broken window pane.
The boy gave the wire a twist around the outer tin and left one end free. Then he charged the inner tin negatively at the friction machine, and the outer tin (wire and all) positively, at the positive pole of the mechanism.
Next, oh so carefully, gripping the free end of the wire between the two strips of glass—he didn’t crave any more shocks like that first one—he brought the wire close, and closer up towards the brass knob.
Before he could ever touch wire to knob—Wow! There it came! Snap, crackle, across the air-gap shot a spark an inch long!